Today, one of the Dorfs had a Strange Mood and made a bed. Out of rubies.

I decided to put it in his room, though I haven't decided whether to call that a punishment or a reward yet. He'll either love sleeping on his masterpiece, or decide making a BED out of hard, rough material was a stupid idea.

I began a new fortress in a world with metals being turned up to max. After a few fortresses with no iron and a running 9 fortresses with no coal whatsoever, I wanted to tweak the odds so I can actually experience what this game has to offer.

I began on a Cold Untamed Wilds map within range of a tower to try to offset the advantage having high metals can provide.

Refuse pile located deep within my fortress, dorfs set to collect refuse outside, found an underground lake ages ago, things are looking pretty nice so far. Can Dorfs catch fish in underground lakes?

So, back to Untamed Wilds. Starting in one made things EASIER. My stockpile of food is currently loaded with Giant Thrips and Giant Crow meat, and my archers don't even need to do any actual training; just hunting has made them ace shots.

Then again, I've yet to see any zombie action. Things might take a turn for the dire once the Necromancers lay eyes on the fortress.

Blegh, the start of year 3 for this fortress has been pretty crappy so far. First off an Undead Siege of ~100 undead and 2 necromancers arrived. I managed to kill them using crossbowmen and slowly filtering them into a narrow corridor. Sadly, the necros left before I could kill them. Lost about 5~6 dwarves taking care of that due to accidents and them not being smart.

Then, a Forgotten Beast spawns in the caverns (luckily it was just a web-spitting crab) and it proceeds to swim through my underground reservoir and crawl up into my fortress. Luckily, my marksdwarves happened to be in the area, so they killed it before it could web up and slaughter my entire working force. Unfortunately, it did take one civilian dwarf with it.

Then, just when things were calming down, a goblin ambush arrives and inexplicably kills 3 military dwarves. Not sure how that happened. It's almost fall, and I can only hope things calm down for a while :/ I had to recruit civilians into the military to fill the gaps and put them on 10-person full-time training so they won't constantly complain about the draft when they swap back to being recruits.

I made a couple changes to my embark setup today. Took out a few unneeded animals and items (you can save a lot of points by switch Plump Helmets for Spawn) so I could bring a pair of Skilled Axemen and Teachers with my newest group. Hopefully the dwarves can get in some more productive combat demonstrations this way.

In order to cut down on dwarf movement, I split the functions of my fortress up between floors; food storage and dining -> food making (and refuse storage and bone/cloth/leather processing) -> other goods processing (wood and stone related to the north, fuel-needing to the south) -> general storage -> rediential -> vampire prison/mine entrance, all of which is connected by a 3x3 block of stairs. In order to cut down on Cave Adaptation, I have the roof of those stairs open to the sky (covered by glass floor) and am in the process of channeling out the original stairs and replacing them with glass stairs.

Unfortunately, there were accidents in the initial channeling. Two of my legendary miners are now dead, dammit :/

Gotta train up a bunch of newb miners. In other news, I've got my masons carving Marble blocks. ALL THINGS WILL BE BUILT WITH MARBLE.

A were...turtle... attacked my fortress today. My last time fighting one the dwarves took so long to kill it that it turned back to human... and then it died pretty easily, natch. This time, after a whole lot of nothing (Lots of missed/block attacks and body locks between the Wereturtle and a single Axedwarf) the Axedwarf just cut his head off and that was the end of it

NOW YOU WILL KNOW WHY YOU FEAR THE NIGHT.

Next time I need to turn the beasts up higher. I turned them up to the second highest and so far I'e only seen on Forgotten Beast, two minotaurs, and now this werebeast.

The map I'm in gend such that the end of the river is at the bottom of a deep ravine. Needless to say, the constant water falling was killing my fps. Ultimately I decided to just turn temperature of during the winter so that the river would stay permanently frozen.

Trying to decide how to make the entrance hall to my fortress even deadlier.

At the moment it has the aforementioned alternating bridges, and I'm nearly finished setting up an array of serrated steel disc weapon traps. I've also got a legendary siege operator ready to fire ballistae down the length of the entrance hall (it's only three squares wide), and the entire hall is lined with fortifications so my marksdwarves can fire into it.